Government

Making Public Records Public: Why open formats are essential for sharing and preserving government data.

By Chander Kant, CEO Zmanda.

Have you ever tried to retrieve a public record from your local, state or federal government? Despite their name, many public records have not been simple or free for citizens to access. Until recently, obtaining copies of even the most basic records has been a grueling process.

There are two layers of barriers in getting to data stored at a government agency: » Read more

2 CommentsPosted 23 Mar 2010 by chanderkant

Liberate your documents.

An acquaintance emailed me a .docx file last week that my older word processor wouldn't open on the first try.  Before you start sending me fixes, don't worry.  I got it open eventually after much grumbling about proprietary formats that aren't really standards.  But I digress.
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0 CommentsPosted 17 Mar 2010 by Melanie Chernoff (Red Hat)

Open source matters to open government. Really.

"Open source and open government are not the same," I've been reading recently. When discussing the role of open standards in open government transparency projects, Bob Caudill at Adobe, is concerned that open source and open standards are being conflated. He likes open standards just fine, but:

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4 CommentsPosted 15 Mar 2010 by Gunnar Hellekson (Red Hat)

How open source can make us a stronger society

I had the opportunity to chat with Deb Woods about Open Source for America.  Take a look at what she has to say about creating a more transparent government and how open source can make us a stronger society.

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0 CommentsPosted 9 Mar 2010 by Kim Jokisch (Red Hat)

Developers for glory: the Apps for Army competition

Although it may be simple to conflate the Apps for Democracy and Apps for America contests with the exciting new Apps for Army contest, they really couldn't be more different. Together they represent an exciting experiment in what it takes to pull communities together around a problem. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 3 Mar 2010 by Gunnar Hellekson (Red Hat)

Indonesia: the IIPA is "Watching" you.

If you use open source, you have no respect for intellectual property. Or at least, that’s what the International Intellectual Property Alliance seems to think. According to this article, the lobbying group is asking the US Trade Representative to put Indonesia on its "Special 301 Priority Watch List,” in part because of its policy encouraging the adoption of open source software by government agencies. » Read more

18 CommentsPosted 26 Feb 2010 by Melanie Chernoff (Red Hat)

Meet the community managers of Forge.mil

At the 2009 Red Hat Summit, we had the opportunity to sit down with Guy Martin and Aaron Lippold, the community managers of the Forge.mil project, to discuss the ways in which Forge.mil is making it easier for people across the DOD to collaborate. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 23 Feb 2010 by Jesse Paddock (Red Hat)

What if politicians innovated the open source way?

In the discussions around some of my previous articles, I've noticed a trend: we seem to be focusing on cultural changes that need to be made for the open source way to be effective in contexts beyond technology. » Read more

8 CommentsPosted 17 Feb 2010 by Chris Grams

Software isn't a skyscraper

Michael Daconta at GCN has posted a brief call to arms for the software industry. Here's the gist: » Read more

1 CommentPosted 15 Feb 2010 by Gunnar Hellekson (Red Hat)

Education and the iPad’s architecture of control

Like most of Jonathan Ive's work, the iPad is beautiful. Like most of Apple's work, it also makes me uneasy. I was planning to write about this feeling of unease, so imagine my delight when I discovered that Timothy B. Lee and others have already done the work for me. » Read more

21 CommentsPosted 4 Feb 2010 by Gunnar Hellekson (Red Hat)